Tablet

Last year, a unique new educational device was tested with a group of school children. The device was the I-slate, an ultra-low-cost tablet computer that is being developed by the Institute for Sustainable and Applied Infodynamics (ISAID), a joint venture of Houston's Rice University and Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. The 10 to 13 year-old children were students at a rural school near Hyderabad, India. The tablet is designed for use in such impoverished schools, as each unit is expected to sell for less than US$50, and future models will run on solar power. Now that the field tests are complete and the results have been analyzed, the I-slate is set to go into full production. Read More

If there's one issue with the gorgeous COOL LEAF keyboard from Minebea, it's the less-than-satisfying feel of the touch panel keying action. When not in use, the equally good-looking Levitatr Bluetooth keyboard has a similarly flat upper surface but when activated the chiclet keys rise up and illuminate to offer some gratifying tactile typing. Read More

Toshiba has announced that its 10.1-inch Thrive tablet will soon receive a smaller and lighter sibling in the form of Thrive 7''. Weighing in at 399 grams (0.88 lbs) and 11.94 mm (0.47 in) thick, the Android 3.2-based Thrive 7'' tablet is powered by NVIDIA Tegra 2 platform with a dual-core CPU and 1GB of RAM, has a 1280×800 resolution LED backlit screen and will be offered in 16 and 32GB models. Read More

Amazon today unveiled its new 7-inch, color touchscreen tablet - the Kindle Fire. The new tablet's display has been chemically strengthened to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic, features iPad-like IPS (in-plane switching) technology for wide viewing angles, and delivers 16 million colors in high resolution. Amazon's huge digital content coffers are available to users and the Wi-Fi-only, sub-$200 tablet also includes a browser that shares some of the processing power needed to deliver complex web pages with Amazon's Cloud servers. Read More

While there are plenty of stands for tablets that are designed to sit on a flat surface, such as the TabGrip, what happens when you’re on the bus or reclining on the couch? You’ll have to hold the device in one hand and do all your touching and swiping with the other, right? Well, those days could be over thanks to an innovative multi-purpose tablet stand called the PadPivot. With a curved base that sits as comfortably on a desktop as it does on the tablet user’s thigh, the PadPivot is designed to provide hands-free support to a tablet so users can devote both their hands to the important touchy tasks at hand. Read More

NVIDIA promised us back in May that its Kal-El Project quad-core system-on-a-chip platform for mobile devices would come as a "battery-friendly" solution, although without giving details at the time. The company has recently outlined the secret behind Kal-El's energy efficiency - it's a technology called Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing (vSMP), which is based on an extra fifth "companion core" designed to perform less demanding tasks in the background. Read More

ARCHOS has confirmed release dates and pricing for its new breed of G9 Android Tablets, which hold the promise of satisfying mobile storage junkies thanks to spacious HDD options being available. The only change to the specs announced in June is that the new ARCHOS tablets will launch with Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) instead of 3.1. Read More

Sony finally threw its hat in the tablet ring at IFA 2011 by announcing the market launch of the Sony Tablet S and Tablet P (previously codenamed S1 and S2). The biggest point-of-difference from other Android tablets and the heavyweight champ iPad is form factor - the Tablet S gets an unusual asymmetrical shape and the Tablet P throws the conventional tablet format away completely with its clam-shell, dual-screen design. Having stated its intention to become number two in the tablet marketplace and setting pricing identical to that of the iPad 2, Sony is certainly aiming high with this one. Read More

Only a couple of months after Samsung debuted its Galaxy Tab at IFA 2010 rumors were circulating that an AMOLED version may have been in the works. One year on from the official launch of the tablet, Samsung has unveiled just such a device at IFA 2011 in the form of the Galaxy Tab 7.7. As the name suggests, the Galaxy Tab 7.7 sports a 7.7-inch display (that’s 0.7-inches bigger than the original Galaxy Tab) and is the first tablet to feature a Super AMOLED Plus display, which boasts 1280 x 800 pixel resolution and promises brighter, higher-contrast viewing. Read More